Red Queen (Red Queen 1)

Choppy brown waves foam against the boat, leaving a film of black grime on the gleaming steel hull. The world takes on a strange tint, like I’m looking through dirty glass. The low-lying clouds aren’t clouds at all, but smoke pouring from a thousand chimneys, obscuring the sky. Gone are the trees and the grass—this is a land of ash and decay.

“Gray Town,” Maven murmurs.

Factories stretch out as far as I can see, dirty and massive and humming with electricity. It hits me like a fist, almost knocking me off my feet. My heart tries to keep up with the unearthly pulse and I have to sit down, feeling my blood race.

I thought my world was wrong, that my life was unfair. But I could never even dream of a place like Gray Town.

Power stations glow in the gloom, pulsing electric blue and sickly green into the spider-work of wires in the air. Transports piled high with cargo move along the raised roads, shuttling goods from one factory to another. They scream at each other in a noisy mess of tangled traffic, moving like sluggish black blood in gray veins. Worst of all, little houses surround each factory in an ordered square, one on top of the other, with narrow streets in between. Slums.

Beneath such a smoky sky, I doubt the workers ever see daylight. They walk between the factories and their homes, flooding the streets during a shift change. There are no officers, no cracking whips, no blank stares. No one is making them watch us pass. The king doesn’t need to show off here, I realize. They are broken from birth.

“These are the techies,” I whisper hoarsely, remembering the name the Silvers so blithely toss around. “They make the lights, the cameras, the video screens—”

“The guns, the bullets, the bombs, the ships, the transports,” Maven adds. “They keep the power running. They keep our water clean. They do everything for us.”

And they receive nothing but smoke in return.

“Why don’t they leave?”

He just shrugs. “This is the only life they know. Most techies will never leave their own alley. They can’t even conscript.”

Can’t even conscript. Their lives are so terrible that the war is a better alternative, and they’re not even allowed to go.

Like everything else on the river, the factories fade away, but the image stays with me. I must not forget this, something tells me. I must not forget them.

Stars wait for us beyond another forest of barrier trees, and beneath them: Archeon. At first I don’t see the capital at all, mistaking its lights for blazing stars. As we sail closer and closer, my jaw drops.

A triple-layered bridge runs across the wide river, linking the two cities on either side. It’s thousands of feet long and thriving, alive with light and electricity. There are shops and market squares, all built into the Bridge itself a hundred feet above the river. I can just picture the Silvers up there, drinking and eating and looking down on the world from their place on high. Transports blaze along the lowest tier of the Bridge, their headlamps like red-and-white comets cutting through the night.

Both ends of the Bridge are gated, and the city sectors on either side are walled in. On the east bank, great metal towers stab out of the ground like swords to pierce the sky, all crowned with gleaming giant birds of prey. More transports and people populate the paved streets that climb up the hilly riverbanks, connecting the buildings to the Bridge and the outer gates.

The walls are diamondglass, like back at the Hall, but set with floodlit metal towers and other structures. There are patrols on the walls, but their uniforms are not the flaming red of Sentinels or the stark black of Security. They wear uniforms of clouded silver and white, almost blending into the cityscape. They are soldiers, and not the kind who dance with ladies. This is a fortress.

Archeon was built to endure war, not peace.

On the western bank, I recognize the Royal Court and the Treasury Hall from the bombing footage. Both are made from gleaming white marble and fully repaired, even though they were attacked barely more than a month ago. It feels like a lifetime. They flank Whitefire Palace, a building even I know on sight. My old teacher used to say it was carved from the hillside itself, a living piece of the white stone. Flames made of gold and pearl flash atop the surrounding walls.

I try to take it in, my eyes darting between both ends of the Bridge, but my mind just can’t fathom this place. Overhead, airships move slowly through the night sky, while airjets fly even higher, as fast as shooting stars. I thought the Hall of the Sun was a wonder; apparently I never knew the meaning of the word.

But I can’t find anything beautiful here, not when the smoky, dark factories are only a few miles back. The contrast between the Silver city and the Red slum sets my teeth on edge. This is the world I’m trying to bring down, the world trying to kill me and everything I care about. Now I truly see what I’m fighting against and how difficult, how impossible, it will be to win. I’ve never felt smaller than I do now, with the great bridge looming above us. It looks ready to swallow me whole.

But I have to try. If only for Gray Town, for the ones who have never seen the sun.

TWENTY-THREE

By the time the boat docks at the western bank and we’re back on land, night has fallen. At home, this meant shutting down the power and going to sleep, but not in Archeon. If anything, the city seems to brighten while the rest of the world goes dark. Fireworks crackle overhead, raining light down on the Bridge, and atop Whitefire, a red-and-black flag rises. The king is back on this throne.

Thankfully there are no more pageants to suffer through; we are greeted by armored transports to take us up from the docks. To my delight, Maven and I have a transport to ourselves, joined by only two Sentinels. He points out landmarks as we pass, explaining what seems like every statue and street corner. He even mentions his favorite bakery, though it sits on the other side of the river.

“The Bridge and East Archeon are for civilians, the common Silvers, though many are richer than some nobles.”

“Common Silvers?” I almost have to laugh. “There’s such a thing?”

Maven just shrugs. “Of course. They’re merchants, businessmen, soldiers, officers, shop owners, politicians, land barons, artists, and intellectuals. Some marry into High Houses, some rise above their station, but they don’t have noble blood, and their abilities aren’t as, well, powerful.”

Not everyone is special. Lucas told me that once. I didn’t know he meant Silvers too.

“Meanwhile, West Archeon is for the court of the king,” Maven continues. We pass a street lined with lovely stone houses and pruned, flowering trees. “All the High Houses keep residences here, to be close to the king and government. In fact, the entire country can be controlled from this cliff, if the need should arise.”